1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of grease-hood systems for removing grease and smoke from the spaced above cooking appliances, particularly in restaurants.
2. Description of Prior Art
There are, in general, two types of grease-hood systems commonly enjoyed in restaurants at the present time in the United States. One is the "canopy" type wherein the entire hood is disposed at an elevation sufficiently high that the cook stands beneath a portion thereof. Such canopy hoods are normally quite large and expensive.
The second type of grease-hood system has a low-level intake portion far beneath the elevation of the head of the cook. In such systems, the stove or other cooking appliance often protrudes forwardly from beneath the intake portion, thus permitting the cook to see what is cooking on the rear portion of the cooking appliance, and also permitting the cook to bend forwardly (without bumping his head) to manipulate food on such rear portion of the cooking appliance.
The conventional operation of such last-mentioned type of hood is to employ an exhaust blower to suck large amounts of air and fumes through the grease filters, without providing any supply of air from outside the room to the grease-hood system. Such apparatus is vastly wasteful of energy and produces other important bad effects including, for example, the creating of excessive drafts in the restaurant. Other prior-art systems do not rely merely on the sucking of air through the systems but additionally blow air from outside the room to the vicinity of the cooking appliance (at an elevation far below that of the intake or entry portion of the grease-hood system). For example, Jensen U.S. Pat. No. 3,400,649 brings supply air down to the back of the cooking appliance, then blows and sucks it up through the filters. The forced-flow upwardly-directed air in such Jensen patent is stated to create a venturi effect which draws room air back over the cooking surface.
There have long existed smoke hoods which do not incorporate any grease filters or any blowers, and thus are totally unsatisfactory from standpoints of smog, fire hazards, etc. Some such hoods did not extend to the front of the cooking surfaces therebeneath, and relied upon convection to move the fumes rearwardly and upwardly from the front regions of the cooking surfaces.
Relative to a further aspect of the present disclosure, there have long existed restaurants which have plate shelves and/or pass-throughs beneath or adjacent the smoke hoods. However, such restaurants did not achieve anything approximating the economy, efficiency, etc., of the shelf-grease hood combination disclosed herein. In particular, there were no (insofar as applicant is aware) forced-flow filter-type grease hoods which were so constructed that only a natural convective flow of air and cooking fumes passed upwardly adjacent the pass-through and/or the plate shelf.